Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1887-06-09
THE TIMES.
From the: Atehison Championx
ss! OUR STATE. Vi

Cn0b MS SCAtS VI dSe. HS Cos
railway line, the Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe, had sold all her lands nearly
a year ago, and last winter her various
land agents celebrated the event By
giving a dinner and costly presents to
their chief, Col-gAa s sJohnson. The
Santa Fe, or .'the Atchisonf las it is
known at the New York Stock board
and all over the east) on longer adver-
tises its lands or its State except in
cidentally. 1t used to appear at Nat.
ional expositions and at State fairs all
over the country, with artist Worrel at
the head, making the most attractive
dispiaylofYany.. Kansas products. This
We shall never see again.
Our State Board of Agriculture. and
State Horticultural Society used to
take part in similar exhibitions and
they won gold metals, first premiums
for2 Kansas:: fruits, in such old State
capitals as Boston and Richmond.
They don't do it anymore.
Kansas:.apples go east and west every
fall by the train load, and attract no more
attention than our trains of wheat, corn,
2 hogs and cattle "a s :
s The Kansas Pacific, now the Union
Pacific never did very much to advertise
our state or even its own lands. At
first, almost, it was managed by st.
Louis men, and Missouri has never any
any advertising. Giving birth to border
rufians, Price and Quantrell and the
James boys are the most conspicuous
facts in her history for thirty-three
years-a third of century. The Union
Pacific is now in the hands of eastern
men and is progressively managed, but
it was passive while Kansas was build
ing. 1t still has land for sale; it is
going with great rapidity, on easy terms,
and will all be gone before this year
ends.
The Central Branch, in the days, of
Major Downs, the St. Joseph & Denver
The|For Scott & Gulf and the NJ. K. &
T., (now Missouri Pacific, all did a
good work in making Kansas known,
and in inviting and in securing immigra-
ton. All retired from the field some
years ago. Their maps and circular
are interesting historical documents
now and will find their way to the
State Historical Society. The lands
are homes, the homes of ten thousands
of people, the fields fenced with Usage
orange, cattle grazing, orchards growing;
every house with near nclghbor and
every community with churches and
schools.
Western Kansas is still doing some
advertising'!b ut it is with our own peo-
pie. Every township in every eastern
county has representatives in all Of the
. western counties, and outsiders from
other States rush into Western Kansas
as starving men flock to a feast. I As
Jack Downing puts it, why, the
: American people have just foundfont
that God Almighty has got done making
landr Western Kansas is filling up
much more rapidly than Eastern Kan
sas did. Ram comes with the people.
Charles Wilmington, the first settler
in Lyons county, told Printer ?. B.
Plumb, thirty years ago, "No; we
hav'n't ever had any rain out here on
the Neosho: no need of it; God will
send it as soon as the people come.
And this now looks like history from
all of Kansas-for the fourth year, in
1887, for Western Kansas. A farmer
wrote us from Logan county the other
day, with this postscript to his letter:
cit is too wet to plow." All this
seems incredible; but it exists The
law covering the movement of the
planets was not known till Columbus
had been dead hundred years; and
when Kepler published it he said: '1t
may we'll wait a century for reader, as
God has waited six thousand years for
an observer. To these thugs rain
fall and scientific facts, seem to come
along when we need them and are ready
for them. ALI Kansas, east and west,
is peopled, and it will never be unpeo-
pied. The last settlers call themselves
rustlers, and they can't be whipped by
climate.
Thus we are settled to the condition
of the old, the grown the.fully,develop-
ed States. And We feel sort of sad |
and sorry about it, too. There was SO
much hard work and comfort in squat
ting, in breaking the prairie, in setting
out trees, in building the claim shanty,
and, years afterwards the house. In
seeing things grow, the farm improve,
the township. county and State go ahead
and 60 ahead faster and better than the
eye has ever before seen. We have
''got there in the sense of having
achieved material prosperity, and we
are surely getting there in a much
better and higher sense.
The name of Kansas as an industrious
pushing, successful State, and in these
respects SURPRISING all other new and
young States, stands very high, on top.
But there is a higher place yet, higher
than the earth, somewhat matter of
sentiment, in the stars, in the spirit
and not of the world. In the realm of
abstract principle, of freedom, .justic
and equality to all, with no limitation
or exception; in the matter of virtue
and purity; in all things lovely and of
good report; in literature aud art; in
whatever adorns and ennobles life aud
character-in all these thinus Kansas